Page 22 - CAMPAIGN Spring 2022

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CAMPAIGN Spring 2022
Elin, actor and playwright, contacted the BNTVA earlier this year about her upcoming play “Guinea Pigs.” Elin’s parents met whilst working at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston, and her father Mike was sent to Christmas Island to work and witness thermonuclear detonations. Mike was passionate about the cause of the nuclear veterans’, was dedicated to the BNTVA, and spoke far and wide about the plight of the nuclear test veterans until he passed away.
Guinea Pigs by Elin Doyle In theatre, we tell stories.
We tell stories, so that people connected with the story can feel heard and understood. We tell stories, so that people who are not connected with the story can feel how it feels to be connected with it, to share in the experience and maybe change their perceptions as a result of that shared experience.
GUINEA PIGS is a heart-warming play about Gerry and Coral, a test veteran Dad and daughter whose lives have been shaped forever by his time at the British nuclear tests. It’s written for people connected with the nuclear tests. It’s also written for people not connected with the nuclear tests. And it’s written by me, the daughter of a nuclear test veteran.
When the body of weapons specialist, Dr David Kelly, was found in a field after the Iraq war dodgy dossier scandal in 2003, my dad immediately suspected foul play and I agreed it appeared suspicious.
You see, in our family, like many test veteran families, there is an
underlying perception that Government is capable of all manner of dastardly deeds. Suspecting authority figures of dubious intent has become part of my family’s DNA. Whether justified or not, the doorway to instinctive mistrust and suspicion has been eternally wedged open.
And this is why test veteran families are different to other families. It’s not just about the tests – it affects everything.
My parents met at evening class; both on the same educational scheme attached to their jobs at AWRE, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire.
Mum looked across the classroom at the boy with the pink cheeks and felt sorry for him - such a high colour in his face, the poor boy must have a terrible temperature - in truth, my dad, Mike Doyle, known as Paddy back then, had permanently rosy cheeks. Dark, dark hair that turned a beautiful white with age, steel-blue eyes that scorched through anyone daring to fob him off with bluster and obfuscation, and those intensely pink cheeks, as if
always just back from a brisk walk on a bright winter’s morning. They were 17 and 19.
Mum was a local girl who ‘jumped the fence,' having started work at a private firm next-door and later moving to the secretive AWRE for better pay and prospects, she would catch the AWRE works bus from home in Reading to the Aldermaston site. I’m not sure how Dad ended up there - but this was the man who was so captivated by science and especially new scientific discovery, that he splashed out on our first ever family TV so he could watch the moon landings. I can imagine he was attracted by the idea of being
at the cutting edge of innovation and the chance to be involved in a project that (ironically) was intended to guarantee world peace and prevent a repeat of the war that as young boy he’d seen his dad and uncle live through.
We had a dressing up box in an old trunk. Full of musty-smelling objects from the past; a 1950s dress of Mum’s made of hard, scratchy, sparkly material, our Christening gown made from Mum’s